It was always a pleasure to write. I can never think of a time when I just hacked something out to fulfil a contract or meet a deadline. I might have hacked things out, but it was always stuff I loved.

Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

It's a writer's job to carve with language, to hew close to the bone.

Most gothics are overplotted novels whose success or failure hinges on the author's ability to make you believe in the characters and partake of the mood.

Love, the simplest, strongest, and most unforgiving of all emotions.

A great whispering noise began to rise in the woods on either side of the tracks, as if the forest had just noticed we were there and was commenting on it.

She did not know if her gift came from the lord of light or of darkness, and now, finally finding that she didn't care which, she wad overcome with almost indescribable relief, as if a huge weight, long carried, had slipped from her shoulders.